Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:35 pm on 10 January 2023.
Thanks very much. Well, I'm very sorry, of course, to hear about that individual case. There are examples where people are getting the support in some of our same-day emergency care centres, where they go in, they get an appointment, they know when they're going in, they get the cast done on the same day. I'm sorry that that hasn't happened in this case, but I can assure you that it is happening all over different parts of Wales.
Certainly, I think it is important that we learn lessons. Starting early was a good idea. I think we have to understand that our profiling of our expectations in relation to demand, after the pandemic, we probably didn't organise for quite as many people as we thought may become sick as a result of the flu. It came earlier than we expected, so we probably have to be ready a little bit earlier. And we got our 100 ambulance workers out, and they're ready, but they're ready this week—it would have been great if we had them ready just before Christmas. So all of those things would have been good to have had, to have been brought forward a little bit, but that modelling, it will be interesting, when we have time, to look back on where our modelling went wrong and what is it that's happening. Again, though, we've just come out of a pandemic, we've never been here before, so obviously people's immunity systems are down after a couple of years of not being exposed. And I guess none of us really knew quite how many people would get sick over this particular period. I don't know about you, but almost everybody I know has had some form of flu over Christmas—it's really affected huge, huge numbers of people. And obviously, whilst people like me have managed to get through it, just about, there are people who are much older who have really suffered and have finished up in our hospitals.